A Dark and Stormy Write...

It’s around 3:00 am.

You’ve gotten up (or are still up, as the case may be).

You need to relieve yourself.

So there you are…and then…the thoughts come.
You can’t help but imagine footsteps coming down the hall…

and that you will turn around to see something truly unwanted.

Like the sack headed kid from The Orphanage. Or the evil white scarecrow from the BBC mini-series of Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective. Toshio from The Grudge. A headless flannel-shirted man. That sort of thing. You know it’s silly. But still, your “creeped out” meter is off the scale. Why is it so easy to scare ourselves?

Then you get back into bed with your spouse. You try falling asleep. But despite the hour, you’re just not tired. So you keep right on thinking of those horrors…and more. A horned glowing alien who comes to sit on the edge of your bed with you. And it doesn’t help when your spouse wakes up and asks if you heard a thumping coming from somewhere in the room. After comforting your love, you settle down yourself. If you’re lucky, you can turn it around and be creative. Since you’re already creating mucho macabre, why not craft it into something that you can use?

Such as in terms of writing.

And that’s what I did.

Suddenly I had an absolutely unsettling image and situation for the ghost story novel that I will one day write.
And then…I could get to sleep.